Sleeves are used in the retail sale of pot plants and bouquets. The sleeves serve to protect the leaves, blooms, and stems of a bouquet from breaking or being damaged, during shipping from the grower to a retail outlet, while on display, and while being carried home by a customer.
Sleeves have been decorated with printed images to enhance the appearance of the pot plant or bouquet. Some sleeves are opaque, made of solid, single-color material, or made with various printed images that cover some or all of an opaque substrate. Alternatively, the substrate may be at least partly transparent. In the case of pot plants, the portion of the sleeve that surrounds the pot and lower branches may be printed with images to cover these areas while the balance of the sleeve is transparent leaving the foliage and flowers exposed to promote retail sale. In the case of bouquets, the stems may be at least partially hidden by images on the sleeve while the blooms and adjacent foliage are at least partially visible through the surrounding sleeve. The printed images may be seasonal, for example, red hearts on Valentine's Day, or red and green for the Christmas holidays, or merely decorative. The number and variety of printed images for both bouquet sleeves and pot plants sleeves is limited only by the imagination.
Sleeves especially for pot plants have also been made with separable upper portions. Typically the sleeve has a line of perforations that falls at or above the top of the pot. The retail customer may then tear off the part of the sleeve surrounding the pot plant's foliage and leave the remainder of the sleeve to decorate the pot and perhaps hide some part of the stems. Sleeves generally of this sort have been marketed by Professional Package Company of Cleveland, Ohio, the assignee of the present invention.
Heretofore most sleeves have been manufactured of a single material. Specifically, while different manufacturers have used different materials, each sleeve has generally been formed from two layers of the same material. Although some may have suggested that sleeves might be made of laminated materials, sleeves have not heretofore been commercialized that are made with layers of different materials joined at the seams so as to appear as independent layers.